23 January 2012, Wayland, Massachusetts. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) is pleased to announce that PIXIA Corporation has raised their OGC membership level to Principal Member. PIXIA has been an active member in the OGC since 2006, contributing to progress in several OGC Technical Committee working groups.

PIXIA plans to increase the extent of their participation, working with other OGC members to advance standards and best practices related to rapid data access in the areas of geospatial imagery, wide area motion imagery (WAMI), and full motion video (FMV).

The Consortium’s Principal Members exercise influence over the development, release and adoption of OGC standards through their voting rights in the OGC Planning Committee. They also provide valuable industry expertise to support the forward-thinking market strategy of the consortium.

“PIXIA’s move to Principal Membership in the OGC reflects the importance of standards in the broader industry effort to turn image data into knowledge,” said Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the OGC. “Their technical commitment to the development and market application of open standards is deeply appreciated, and we are excited that they will be playing an increasing role in advancing the market and policy direction of the consortium as a Principal member.”

Rahul Thakkar, VP of Technology for PIXIA, said, “As the lead advocate for the WAMI web services specification, PIXIA has invested considerable effort in promoting OGC interoperability and research in innovative solutions.”

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 430 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.